I also had an email about this petition from 38 Degrees come through on Friday. Launched by John Clutterbuck, a 38 Degrees member, it requires MPs to view their parliamentary role as a full-time job. This is another petition I’ve had absolutely no problem signing, because this is how it should be. In the 19th and early 20th centuries there was indeed a strong feeling against MPs having careers outside parliament because of the danger of commercial corruption. But after MPs started being sponsored by the unions as part of the Labour movement, the right argued that there should be no obstacles to figures from industry sitting in parliament. And so we have the wretched situation today where something like 77 per cent of the MPs during Cameron’s squalid tenure of No. 10 were millionaires and directors of companies. It was the same over the other side of the Pond, where a Republican businessman got so fed up with this that he launched a campaign for congressmen and women to wear patches indicating which companies had sponsored their campaigns to show who they were really representing.
Get business out of parliament, and clean politics in!
I’ve therefore signed the petition, and if you feel the same way, please do so as well.
‘Dear David,
How do you feel about MP’s taking on second jobs or going on their holiday when they should be working in the Houses of Parliament?
John, a 38 Degrees supporter, thinks that being an MP is a full time job and taking on other roles or going on holiday outside of parliamentary recess can’t be good for constituents. [1]
While some MPs work second jobs in the NHS, others choose to appear on TV shows, work advising private health companies, or take holidays while they should be in parliament. [2]
John believes these types of jobs should not be allowed. He also thinks that, as with teachers, if you choose to go into politics you should accept that means your holidays have to be taken at a certain time in the year. That’s why he’s started a petition calling for the role of an MP to be considered a full time job, with stricter rules around taking second jobs or going on holiday.
David, do you agree with John? If so, use the button below to sign his petition today calling on a ban on second jobs and holidays outside of recess.It takes 30 seconds to sign:
What: MPs should not be allowed to take holiday while Parliament is sitting or take second jobs while they are a Member of Parliament. Being an elected MP is – or should be – a full time job.
Why is this important: Being an MP is a full time job. It is not something that should be done with half measures.
Right now during a cost of living crisis and government unrest, it is of extreme importance that all MPs serve their constituencies the best they can. Taking on second jobs or going on holidays outside of parliamentary recess can simply not be better for the good of constituents and the UK as a whole.
When someone decides to become a teacher, they do so knowing it means they will be limited on when they can go on holiday. If you choose to run for Parliament it should be with the same understanding.
PS: John Clutterbuck started their petition on the 38 Degrees website.
With 38 Degrees anyone can start their own campaign with the click of a button. But that’s just where your journey begins. Creating a petition, then sharing it with friends and colleagues, can soon give you a groundswell of support. Perhaps you’ll end up changing something really important.
I’ve just attended an online meeting on Zoom of my local Labour party in south Bristol. There was an excellent report by our local MP. Karin Smythe, who mostly laid down the issues involved in the government’s new health and social care bill, and Labour’s opposition to it. The opposition largely consists of removing the participation of private healthcare companies on the new commissioning groups the Tories are proposing. They also want an end to compulsory tendering.
All good stuff. And I believe that Smyth is sincere in her opposition, but I don’t have the same faith in Stormfront Starmer.
But she also dropped a bombshell. Sajid Javid also wants to introduce another Health and Social Care Bill and is talking about a ‘Health and Social Care Levy’. No-one is sure what it is, but it looks like a form of private health insurance.
Private health insurance and privatisation. This is the American system that Thatcher wanted to introduce.
I’ve got friends who come from medical families and who trained as doctors and pharmacists. For all you Tories and Blairites reading this, just ask yourselves: Do I have £50,000 to spare for an operation? Because this is the average cost of one.
Do you want to spend the equivalent of £200 simply for seeing your doctor, never mind prescription?
Can I afford £50 to spend on medicine, as this is what some of the medicine that we get from the pharmacies really cost?
40,000 people die every year in America because they no longer can afford their medical treatment.
Inability to afford medical care is either the primary, or at least the secondary cause of bankruptcy in the ‘Land of the Free’.
Do you want this squalid, sorry state of affairs for Blighty and its great people?
I damn well don’t!
If this istrue, then Sajid Javid, Matt Hancock, Iain Duncan Smith, Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson and all the rest are vermin. Utter, murderous vermin.
Maureen Lipman’s the veteran British actress and comedienne who’s resigned several times from the Labour party whining about anti-Semitism. She did it a few years ago when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour party because he was a terrible anti-Semite as shown by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Chief Rabbi and the noxiously misnamed Campaigned Against Anti-Semitism and the British press, media and political establishment. Well, the British Jewish establishment hated Corbyn because they’re Zionists, and Israel had defined Corbyn and Jackie Walker – yep, a Black Jewish academic and grannie, who I don’t believe has a single anti-Semitic bone in her body – the No. 10 threat to Israel. Because they stand up for the Palestinians for the same reason they stood up against apartheid South Africa, the campaigns against real racism here in Blighty. And that included firm opposition against anti-Semitism. One of the piccies Mike put up about the former Labour leader shows him warmly greeting a group of Orthodox Jewish gents, who were there to express their appreciation for his support to stop the historic North London synagogue from being redeveloped. I think it was the first, or at least one of the first Haredi synagogues in the UK. Which the Board of Deputies, the political wing of the United Synagogue, wished to tear down and redevelop. But the good Lord forbid anyone from seeing anything sectarian or ‘anti-Semitic’ in their attempt to demolish what is clearly an historic site dear to another part of Britain’s diverse Jewish community. Corbyn definitely ain’t an anti-Semite by any stretch of the imagination, and neither was ever a Communist, Trotskyite or whatever other bogeyman haunts the imaginations of our right-leaning press and political elite.
Lipman’s claims of anti-Semitism in the Labour leadership are also weakened by the fact that she left the Labour party, again citing anti-Semitism, years before, when Ed Miliband was leader. Yes, Miliband, who’s Jewish, the son of Ralph Miliband, highly respected Marxist scholar and immigrant from Belgium, who fought for this country against the Nazi jackboot during WWII. And who was monstered for his trouble by the Heil, who ran a hit piece against him as ‘the man who hated Britain’. Well, he hated the public schools and the British class system, which is entirely reasonable and proper. Especially when it creates thugs and parasites like David Cameron and Boris Johnson. But Miliband senior actually fought for this country, unlike Paul Dacre’s father, who stayed at home and was the rag’s showbiz correspondent. Or Geordie Grieg’s old dad, who was a member of one of the pro-Nazi appeasement groups. Why did she think the Labour party was ridden with Jew-hatred? Again, Israel. Miliband had offered mild criticism of the Israeli state’s abominable treatment of the Palestinians. This was too much for Lipman’s fanatical Zionism, and she stormed out.
Well, she was on Gogglebox last Friday with Giles Brandreth watching and commenting on last week’s ‘great telly’ (sic). One of the pieces they were watching was Matt Hancock’s resignation because of his Ugandan discussions, as Private Eye calls it, with his secretary. Lipman thought that all the abuse was dreadful, considering how well he’d done as Health Secretary. Yep! She really said that. Well, as Kryton once said about Rimmer on Red Dwarf, ‘Oh for a world class psychiatrist!’ Either that or she’s been taking some, er, heavy duty non-prescribed medication with her evening glass of Horlicks. Because Hancock’s record as Health Secretary has been abysmal. He’s corrupt, giving vital contracts away to companies, simply because his mates run them. He was unable to get proper supplies of PPE, thus causing some of our professional and heroic frontline staff to die unnecessarily and putting the lives of others in serious danger. Especially staff from the Black and Asian communities, who were particularly vulnerable and hard hit. Care homes were left exempt from measures that were in place to protect hospital patients, thus causing even more deaths among the elderly and infirm. He is responsible for running down and privatising the NHS, as part of long term Tory and Blairite policy, so that waiting lists are growing. And it’s thanks to him and Boris that Britain had the worst death rate in Europe and the second worse in the world.
There are three explanations why Lipman believes a glaring incompetent like Hancock has done a good job. The shame at appearing in Carry On Columbus back in 1992 has, after 21 years, finally caught up with her and driven her mad. Arguing against this is that Julian Clary and Alexei Sayle also appeared in it, and although it wasn’t their finest hour, both of them are still mentally hale and happy. On the other hand, perhaps whatever herbal tea she may take contains the active ingredient in Cannabis. There are strong arguments for its medical use, such as to treat the pain from some diseases as well as the sickness some cancer patients experience. But I don’t think Lipman is on it, or anything containing it or other drugs. She seems far too genteel and personally wholesome.
Which leaves the third explanation: she never was really Labour. She may have joined the party or supported it for tribal reasons. Her family, like many Jews a generation or so ago, supported Labour. But as the very Jewish Tony Greenstein has shown, that allegiance changed as the Jewish community became more prosperous. 62 per cent of Britain’s Jews are upper middle class, and accordingly vote Tory. Lipman appears to have been a Blairite Red Tory, who particularly liked Blair because he was an outright supporter of Israel. That changed when Miliband became leader and showed he had something of a backbone when it came to condemning the Jewish state’s atrocities against the Palestinians.
But Blair wanted the privatisation of the Health Service, something no real Labour party member or supporter should ever back. And it appears Lipman supports it too from her comments about how well Matt Hancock has done as Health Secretary.
That bit on Gogglebox tore the liberal mask off, and showed the Tory face underneath. She never was a real member of the Labour party, and the party lost nothing from her loud and mendacious departure.
I had another email on Wednesday from the anti-privatisation, pro-NHS organisation We Own It about their efforts to block the further privatisation of the NHS. They’d sent me an email previously explaining that our criminally useless health secretary, Matt Hancock, wants to put private healthcare companies in charge of NHS boards and official bodies. This has already been done in the NHS organisation(s) in charge of Bath and North East Somerset and Swindon and Wiltshire.
This follow-up letter explains the issues, and takes matter further. There are links which take you to a page where you can add your name and create a form letter to be sent to the NHS organisations, who have appointed Virgin to their board, protesting against it. This is in addition to the tug of wars We Own It hoped to organise up and down the country in Friday also as a symbolic protest against this privatisation. They were to feature people pulling against private healthcare companies on the other side. I haven’t seen anything about such protests in the news, so I guess there weren’t many of them. Or perhaps the lamestream media have blocked the coverage. That’s happened with protests before, so I really wouldn’t put it past them. Here’s the email, plus links.
“Virgin Care Ltd has been given a seat on the TOP NHS decision-making body in the region covering Bath and NE Somerset, Swindon AND Wiltshire.
This means it will make decisions about what NHS care is provided locally (and what ISN’T provided).
If this is allowed in that region, it endangers all of us and sets a precedent for other regional NHS boards – we can’t let this go ahead. WHEREVER you are, email the top local boards now to get Virgin kicked OUT of decisions on your NHS.
Matt Hancock’s legislation plans to let private companies on to decision-making boards and we’re seeing this creep in already.
If this is allowed to go ahead in Bath, North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire, it’s a really worrying precedent for the new set up of our NHS.
Stop this now by writing to both the new ‘partnership’ board and the old CCG board – the two most important local NHS bodies – to say NO – now.
To say that you don’t want Virgin making decisions about our health service.
That your NHS was founded based on solidarity and a shared want for universal care at the point of need.
Virgin Care Ltd want profit. Can you join the call that they are kicked off this top regional board, to stop these private companies taking hold of our NHS nationally?
What about the rest of the UK? This decision only affects this region, and this bill will mean disintegration of our NHS in England. Luckily the rest of the UK is not going ahead with these plans YET.
Your voice is crucial to winning this fight against privatisation. Thank you.
In solidarity,
Cat, Zana, Johnbosco, Chris, Alice and Pascale – the We Own It team”
I’ve joined their campaign and sent a letter of protest against the inclusion of Virgin Care in NHS decision-making in those areas. It is a form letter, and the process is very simple. It really is just a case of following the link and adding your name and email address, etc. But I hope it has some effect and demonstrates to the authorities that we really don’t want beardie Branson and his ilk destroying the NHS and our health for their profit.
Please feel free to do the same if you feel the same way too.
It seems Matt Hancock and the Tories haven’t given up on their wretched plans to privatise the NHS. The Health Secretary is planning to introduce legislation that will allow private healthcare companies on to the management of NHS organisations. Apparently, this has already happened with Virgin sitting on the board of the NHS in Bath And North-East Somerset. The anti-privatisation organisation We Own It is planning a day of protest against this latest move to break up the health service next Thursday, with symbolic tugs of war taking place between the public and private healthcare companies up and down the country. I got this email from them yesterday.
“Matt Hancock is planning legislation that will let private companies make decisions about our NHS care.
It’s already starting to creep in – Virgin were given a seat on the new NHS body in Bath and Somerset.
You can help to stop this in its tracks by making an impression all across the country with a clear image: this is a TUG OF WAR between you and private companies.
Will you join in the National Day of Action on July 17th and organise a local ‘tug of war’ stunt to say NO to the private takeover of our NHS?
We think this legislation is coming to parliament quite soon.
So NOW is the time to get organised.
By organising an eye-catching ‘tug of war’ stunt, with private companies on one side and US on the other , you’ll be helping to get the news out and show our collective outrage.
Don’t worry if you’ve never organised an action like this before, we’ve got you covered!
The government is trying to put on a spin on this bill, saying it will end privatisation, because they know privatisation of our NHS goes down like a lead balloon.
So it’s VITAL that together we get a huge amount of coverage for the Day of Action.
What about the rest of the UK? This bill will mean disintegration of our NHS in England. Luckily the rest of the UK is not going ahead with these plans yet.
But it is not a good sign for the direction of our NHS as a whole, long term.
Thank you for being part of this fight. You’re not alone in fighting for our NHS.
In solidarity,
Cat, Zana, Johnbosco, Chris, Alice and Pascale – the We Own It team”
I’m afraid I’m too ill at the moment to take part in this myself, but I’m putting it up in case anyone else wants to get involved.
This is extremely ominous, as it definitely won’t be the end of the privatisation of the NHS, whatever lies Hancock spouts. After it’s gone through, the Tories will find yet another pretext to hand it over to private healthcare companies until it is totally transformed into a fully private, for-profit system like America’s. It has to be fought every step of the way.
Starmer should be doing this, but like the good Blairite he is, when it come to tackling capitalism he’s nowhere to be seen.
I realise this is short notice, but I only came across it on Tony Greenstein’s blog yesterday. The Labour In Exile Network is a group of suspended and expelled Labour party members formed in opposition to Keir Starmer’s utterly inept and persecutory leadership.
Tony’s article on them accurately describes Starmer’s continuing attempts to purge the party of left-wingers and traditional socialists, all under the spurious guise of fighting anti-Semitism. He also makes the point that Starmer is very much a creature of the establishment, as shown by his support for the prosecution of the Julian Assange, his hostile attitude to rape victims, whose attackers were acquitted, and membership of the Trilateral Commission. He has also employed an Israeli spy, Assaf Kaplan, as a member of his staff.As Labour leader, he has consistently failed to oppose the Tories, even outrageously declaring that Matt Hancock should not resign. He makes the point that the ban on the three Liverpudlian ladies standing for elected mayor in their fair city should be the last straw for socialists. He makes the point that Starmer has little time for Black people and that Anna Rothery, one of the three women barred without explanation from standing as mayor of Liverpool, was barred because she was a Black socialist.
Tony describes the Labour In Exile Network thus
Labour In Exile Network was formed in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension and the ensuing suspension of officers of the Labour Party who had the temerity to allow their parties to discuss such mundane matters as whether Starmer was out of his reactionary mind to suspend his predecessor.
LIEN has receivedconsiderable publicity in its call for an explanation from Starmer as to why he employed an Israeli spy, Assaf Kaplan, as a member of his staff, with the remit to snoop on members. LIEN has threatened, given the wholesale suspensions and expulsions, to simply reprint its own Labour Party cards. We have also made it clear that we will only canvass for and support those opposed to the present witch-hunt and attack on Labour Party democracy…..
The idea behind the LIEN is simple. It is to form a non-geographical CLP along the lines of the non-geographical International CLP. We aim to keep expelled and suspended socialists together.
It is clear that Starmer’s project, gutting Labour of its socialists and ending its reliance on trade unions, is destined to end in failure. In the words of the inestimable Rachel of Swindon, Starmer’s
mind-boggling inability to lead a once-great party is ensuring a generation of Conservative rule. Let’s be honest here folks, Starmer is a fucking disaster for the Labour Party, and a credit to the Conservative Party.
The Corbyn Project attracted hundreds of thousands of people to the idea that a better world was possible. They were betrayed by people like Jon Lansman and John McDonnell who thought they could trim their sails to the wind and bow to the ruling class ‘anti-Semitism’ attack that was launched against Corbyn and his supporters.
The time to organise is now overdue. Although Momentum claims to have 20,000 members it is like the Titanic. It is unable to turn round in time. We can be more nimble.
The links are in Tony’s original article. For further information, including how you can attend the conference, go to
The speakers include Graham Bash, Tosh MacDonald, Chris Knight, Leah Levane, Jackie Walker and Roger Silverman.
Lien’s formation follows the establishment several years ago of Labour Against the Witch-hunt, a similar network of people expelled from the Labour party for supposed anti-Semitism, but whose real crime was socialism, supporting Jeremy Corbyn and proper treatment of the Palestinians.
I feel passionately that we need these groups, and support their actions against a vicious, factional, racist, and hypocritically anti-Semitic Tory-supporting leadership.
Yesterday, Boris Johnson and his viciously incompetent, murderous government decided to wind up Public Health England. They’re replacing it with a new body, the National Institute for Health Protection. The excuse is that Public Health England was too incompetent in its tackling of the Coronavirus. In fact, as a government-owned body, it took its decisions and orders directly from Johnson, Hancock and co. It is they who are responsible for its failings, and for the failure to impose a lockdown as soon as possible. This has led to the deaths of 70,000 Brits, over half of which may well have been preventable.
The new body, by contrast, seems to be a public-private partnership with the same corporate giants that have been heavily involved in the government’s own failures to tackle the virus, such as the lack of provision of adequate PPE supplies to the frontline NHS staff. Many of whom have now died thanks to Boris’ incompetence and sheer indifference to ordinary human life. Medical experts are warning that the disruption caused by the switch to the new body in the middle of the pandemic could be disastrous and cost even more lives.
And people are not impressed by the person appointed to chair the new organisation, Baroness Dido Harding. She’s a Tory peer, who owes her position in health administration to David Cameron and has a disastrous record as the manager of string of companies. Johnson is now denying it, but it looks very much like she owes her position solely to her connections to Johnson, Cummings, Cameron and Matt Hancock. There have been a string of articles already criticising her. Yesterday the I published a profile of her on page 3, written by Jane Clinton. While not as devastating as the articles about her by left-wing bloggers and commenters on the web, it nevertheless leaves the reader in absolutely no doubt that she is completely unsuited to her job. It runs
Who is Dido Harding?
She came to prominence during the pandemic when she was put in charge of the NHS Test and Trace in England, which has been widely criticised. The Conservative peer is chair of NHS Improvement and has been appointed the new interim chief of the National Institute for Health Protection following the scrapping of Public Health England. She will lead the search for a permanent successor.
She has made headlines in the past.
She was CEO of TalkTalk when in 2015 it fell victim to a data breach that led to nearly 157,000 people’s personal data being accessed by hackers. The company was fined £400,000 for “security failings”. During her time at TalkTalk she received two wooden spoon awards, in 2010 and 2011, for poor customer service dished out by the Daily Mail’s Money Mail section. There is a rather sullen photograph of her with one of the wooden spoons – according to the newspaper she would not pose with both “awards”. At the time she admitted that the company’s customer service was “not yet good enough”.
Wasn’t she a friend of David Cameron?
Yes, they were at Oxford together; where she studied politics, philosophy and economics. She was appointed a member of the House of Lords by Mr Cameron in 2014. She held senior roles at Tesco and Sainsbury’s and was made CEO of TalkTalk in 2010. In 2017 she was appointed chair of NHS Improvement. She has also been a jockey and is on the board of the Jockey Club, which owns Cheltenham Racecourse. She is married to the Conservative MP John Penrose, who is on the advisory board of the think-tank 1828, which has published reports calling for Public Health England to be “scrapped”. It has also called for the NHS to be replaced by an insurance system.
Yesterday Mike put up another article tearing into her appointment and the dismantling of Public Health England, which contained a number of searing comments from the good folks on Twitter, Independent SAGE experts and the head of the Nuffield Trust, Nigel Edwards.
In a previous article criticising the decision, Mike also reproduces a Tweet from neil flek Waugh, which also shows how corrupt and nepotistic her appointment is.
Matt Hancock’s relationship with Dido Harding is totally corrupt. She raised more than £600,000 for his leadership bid. And as Health Secretary he rewarded her with the position of head of TTT, which failed. He is now scrapping NHS England, and she will head up the new body.
Her connection to Cheltenham Racecourse is cause for concern in itself. There were calls earlier this year for the Cheltenham Festival to be cancelled because of the threat of the Coronavirus. It wasn’t, and as a result there was an outbreak in the town. More profit before people.
And does anyone really believe that she does not share her husband’s desire to see the NHS sold off and replaced by an American insurance-driven system, the system that has seen millions of Americans unable to afford proper health care, and going bankrupt and dying because of it?
This is yet another step in the Tory privatisation of the NHS. And Cameron, Johnson, Hancock and Harding are fully behind it.
Nonessential shops reopened on Monday, and the Beeb news was all about hordes of people queuing outside Primark. This will no doubt boost the spirits of Boris and the Tories, who care more about the economy than human lives. Boris’ lead in the polls has collapsed over his mishandling of the Coronavirus epidemic. The last time I heard anything about it, he was at -2 and Starmer was way ahead of him. And after the scandals of the government’s failure to provide adequate supplies of PPE, of deaths from the disease now having reached 40,000 and still climbing, of the massive increase in the deaths of the elderly and vulnerable in care homes there have been the additional scandals of Dominic Cummings breaking the lockdown rules to drive 240 miles to Durham and Robert Jenrick approving the development of Westferry in London after Richard Desmond sent the Tories a £12,000 donation. And then there’s the mass BLM anti-racism protests. BoJob is therefore going to be looking for some good news to distract attention away from the real problems his vile government is in. He’s no doubt hoping that people will be so delighted at the partial lifting of the lockdown and being able to get out and spend their cash again, that they’ll forget all about the deaths, misery and corruption.
So let’s remind them. Last Thursday Zelo Street posted a devastating piece about the news from Channel 4, the Financial Times and the Groaniad that Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College had estimated that if Johnson had imposed the lockdown a week earlier, the death toll from the disease could have been halved. This is the real death toll from the disease, which is believed to be above 60,000 instead of the government’s figure of 40,000. Prof. Ferguson believes that if this had been done, 30,000 lives could have been saved. Despite Matt Hancock appearing on Andrew Marr’s show telling everyone that he was sure that lives wouldn’t have been saved if this had happened, Newsnight’s Lewis Goodall considered otherwise. Zelo Street’s article quotes him thus: “Neither Vallance nor Whitty directly demur from Neil Ferguson’s assertion that the death toll could have been halved if lockdown measures were introduced earlier. They both say, in various forms, that lessons will have to be learned. PM chooses not to answer”.
Paul Waugh on Twitter also noted that Whitty, one of Boris’ advisers, had said that we were not at the end of the epidemic, but in the middle of it. He also reminded everyone that Boris had also said, nearly 12 weeks ago, that in 112 weeks’ time Britain would have beaten the virus and sent it packing. Well, we haven’t. It’s still there and killing people. Then Channel 4 announced that it had seen a leaked paper from one of the government’s advisory committees calling for a lockdown two weeks earlier than when Boris finally bothered to do it. The paper was by Dr. Steven Riley, also at Imperial College London, who believed that the policy Boris was then following of mitigation would lead to 1.7 million deaths. He therefore called for the government to turn to the strategies adopted by Hong Kong, Japan and Italy of ‘successful ongoing control’ – in other words, lockdown. Prof. Ferguson said that the epidemic had been doubling every three to four days before the lockdown had been imposed. If it had been done a week early, the death toll could have been reduced by at least half. And on ITV’s Good Morning, the former government chief scientific adviser Sir David King said that if the country had gone into lockdown a week earlier, the final death toll would only have been less than 10,000.
Zelo Street quotes a Tweet by Tom Hatfield, who declared that the government didn’t impose the lockdown when it should because Boris and the Tories were more concerned about the economy than keeping people alive. They failed at both, because it’s ‘bollocks’ that any one country can come up with a trick in today’s globalised economy to prevent a global economic crisis. ‘They killed people for nothing’, he concluded.
The response of the Tory press was predictable. They poured scorn on the estimate, and carried on their personal attacks against Prof. Ferguson, despite the fact that he was supported in his beliefs by the other scientists Anthony Costello and David King.
Zelo Street concluded its article with
‘The deflection, pushback and whataboutery confirm this is news that cannot be merely swatted away. Alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson got it horribly wrong; he and his ministers misled the public deliberately and shamefully. And as a result, tens of thousands died needlessly. That is the reality of the situation.
The families of the 30,000 should get an explanation. But they probably won’t.’
Absolutely. And governments, the WHO and other international health organisations have known that something like Coronavirus was coming for a very long time. Meera Senthilingam in her book Outbreaks and Epidemics: Battling Infection from Measles to Coronavirus (London: Icon Books 2020) quotes Mike Ryan, executive director of the Health Emergencies Programme at the World Health Organisation, said that an airborne version of Ebola or a form of SARS that was even slightly more transmissible would be enough ‘to bring our society to a halt’. And she observes that this prediction has been confirmed with the emergence of the Coronavirus and the subsequent national lockdowns, the border and school closures and the cancellation of events and their disastrous consequences for business.
Mike, Zelo Street and other left-wing bloggers and news sites have posted endless reports revealing how the Tories cut the preparations the Labour government had put in place to guard against an emergency like the Coronavirus. They’ve also revealed that Dominic Cummings and other senior Tories were so taken with the eugenicist doctrine of the survival of the fittest and the desire to protect the economy, that they were determined not to impose a lockdown. And if that meant a few old people dying, ‘too bad’.
Well old people have died, along with the disabled, children, and even those, who were in otherwise excellent health. It’s also carried off the dedicated, heroic doctors, nurses, carers and other vital workers, who have been doing their level best to treat the sick and keep the country running. We’ve all been impressed by their immense dedication and how they’ve worked long hours at great personal risk.
The opposite has been true of Johnson. Not only was he murderously complacent, he was personally idle. The Tories have been trying to portray him as a heroic leader, who has himself worked long hours to combat the disease. But this is a myth, a conscious piece of propaganda, like the way Mussolini put a light in his window at night to convince Italians that he never slept. Boris didn’t bother attending the first five Cobra meetings, and doesn’t like working weekends.
Deaths were unavoidable. But if Boris had acted sooner, if we hadn’t had ten years of Tory misgovernment, during which the NHS has been run down and privatised, poverty massively increased and government preparedness decimated, all in the name of austerity and giving tax cuts to the rich, 30,000 people would still be alive.
Boris Johnson and the Tories are definitely hoping that the reopening of the High Street will bring good news from now on, and that everyone will forget this horrendous death toll.
So let’s keep on reminding him and them.
Boris has killed 30,000 people. And that doesn’t count the hundreds of thousands already murdered by austerity.
Zelo Street has already covered this story, but it was also reported in yesterday’s I for Saturday, 18th April 2020. The global health expert, Anthony Costello has told a group of MPs that Johnson’s failure to tackle the virus quickly could lead to as many as 40,000 people dying from it. The article by Jane Clinton, ‘UK ‘too slow’ to react to virus and set for second wave, expert warns’, runs
A leading global health expert has accused the Government of being too slow to acton the outbreak and warned that the death toll in the UK could reach 40,000.
Professor Anthony Costello, of University College London’s Institute for Global Health, told a committee of MPs that the “harsh reality” is that “we were too slow with a number of things” and that “further waves” of the disease could mean Britain suffers the highest death toll in Europe.
He said: “This wave could see 40,000 deaths by the time it’s over. If we’re going to suppress the chain of transmission of this virus in the next stage we all hope that the national lockdown and social distancing will bring about a large suppression of the epidemic so far – but we’re going to face further waves.
“And so we need to make sure that we have a system in place that cannot just do a certain number of tests in the laboratory, but has a system at district and community level.”
Professor Costello, a former official with the World Health Organisation, has previously said that the could be as many as 10 waves of the virus.
Giving evidence to the Commons Health and Social Care Committee, he cautioned that there should not be “any blame at this stage” but that “we can make sure in the second wave we’re not too slow.”
The criticism came as Austria’s Health Minister, Rudolf Anschober, said that the number of new cases of Covid-19 in the UK was “frightening” other EU states.
Zelo Street’s article comments on a piece in the Torygraph, which states that new research has dealt a severe blow to hopes of herd immunity. The Torygraph article also reported Costello’s suggestion that there could be eight or ten waves of the virus, killing as many as 40,000 people. But Zelo Street adds the further comments Prof Costello made on Twitter. Costello attack Matt Hancock’s refusal to let the British people know the process for lifting the lockdown, when the South Korean government had a website that contains all the details on the virus in their country. He called for the government to discuss plans for a restoration of community testing and contact tracing, digital apps to aid monitoring and quarantine, the policy of ‘flattening the curve’ should be abandoned, as this implied a commitment to further herd immunity and thus more deaths. He also wanted more volunteers to come forward as a ‘community protective shield’.
Prof Costello also condemned the Government’s policy that could lead to 40,000 deaths. There was no modelling of early testing, a suspension of community tests and contact tracing on March 12, and a two-weeks delay in the implementation of social distancing and lockdown. And he told Observer journo Carole Cadwalladr
“So we are heading up towards over forty thousand deaths. That will make us two hundred times higher than [South] Korea. It could easily put us in first place for the world, although I think the US may rival us for that rate. So this is the worst public health catastrophe of the last century. We have to ask questions about why it’s happened.” Matt Hancock’s job just became a little more challenging.
Zelo Street commented that he was just the latest expert to contradict the opinions of the right-wing, free market supporting media class, and wondered how long it would be before they realised that their tactics of misinformation and lies wouldn’t work on an enemy that couldn’t be demonised into silence. He concluded
‘Prof Costello is another to have done us – and the Government – a great service. Maybe we should start listening to experts – and put the boo-boys in the bin where they belong.’
A possible death toll of 40,000 people, 200 times that of South Korea. And all because Boris and the Tories were determined to run down the NHS in order to create an absolute free market economy.
Whatever Professor Costello says about not blaming anyone, that’s an indictment. Even if, as we all hope, this disease doesn’t carry off that many.
The Scum has put up this video of Matt Hancock reporting today’s death toll from Coronavirus. He also talks about how Boris Johnson is improving, and thanks his well-wishers. It also shows him stating that his aim is to get the NHS staff the PPE equipment they need, and appealing to people to stay home this Easter. I don’t want to show it on this channel, but if you want to see it, it’s at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5O81ijNfUw
Hancock nowhere mentions it in the video, but the Scum’s blurb for it makes it clear that today’s death toll is greater than that experienced by Spain and Italy on the days they experienced the worst fatalities from the disease. It runs
Britain’s coronavirus death toll has jumped by 980 in the last 24 hours – making it the biggest rise yet and more deadly than Spain’s worst day of their outbreak. The grim figures also reveal the total number of cases has risen to 70,272 – up from 65,077 infections the day prior. During Spain’s worst day of their coronavirus outbreak, 961 people died. The jump in deaths is also higher than virus-ravaged Italy’s worst day when 919 people died. The Health Secretary also announced that care homes and GP surgeries will be able to order masks from an Amazon-style NHS store that will deliver protective kit much faster.
This is an indictment of Johnson’s and the Tories’ complacency. Johnson, Cummings and the rest dragged their feet until the very last minute, spouting nonsense about herd immunity and trying to get away with doing the bare minimum until this became absolutely impossible. They were hoping they could let the disease take its course, killing the old, weak, poor and disabled, so that they wouldn’t have to worry about the economy, and could continue making the rich – including themselves – get richer. And according to Mike, they may still be doing this. He put up a post today reporting an article in Byline Times that states that the Tory plan may be too flatten the curve of deaths, but not stop it, so that the disease may eventually kill over a quarter of a million people.
If that’s true, Johnson and his cronies deserve to be tried and condemned as mass murderers.
Meanwhile, I find it remarkable that an arch-Tory paper like the Scum has reported this death toll and made comparison with the two European countries worst hit. And I wonder how long it will stay up. Because I think I saw a similar article yesterday on YouTube, at the moment it disappeared and replaced by something less damning.
and US on the other 
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 